The ‘Happy Death Day’ Trailer Invites You to Relive ‘Groundhog Day’ as a Slasher Movie

The innovators over at Blumhouse— the studio that gave us recent horror hits like Get Out and Split — just revealed the trailer for their latest chiller: Happy Death Day, which turns the premise of Groundhog Day, where a hero relives the same day over and over, into slasher film fodder. In this case a young woman (Jessica Rothe) celebrates her birthday by getting brutally murdered by a psychopath in a mask ... and then wakes back up in bed the previous morning. She keeps reliving the same day (her death day, if you will) until she can figure out who killed her.

Clever! And potentially good meta-horror fodder. Here’s the official synopsis:

Blumhouse (Split, Get Out, Whiplash) produces an original and inventive rewinding thriller in HAPPY DEATH DAY, in which a college student (Jessica Rothe, La La Land) relives the day of her murder with both its unexceptional details and terrifying end until she discovers her killer’s identity.

“Original”? Um, okay, I guess. I do like that they’ve given a name to Groundhog Day’s structure for us - a “rewinding thriller!” If they really are going to make a bunch of these kind of movies, the subgenre needs a name.

The logic hurdle here for me based on the trailer is this: How does the killer know not to try to kill her the exact same way each day? Shouldn’t he just do the same thing over and over? If she is prepared shouldn’t she be able to stop him after a few tries? At least on the surface, that part doesn’t make sense to me. I’m sure this will be addressed in Happy Death Day when it opens in theaters on the spookiest of all release dates, Friday October 13.